Good fortune shines on bluesman

After all these years, Ron Hacker and good fortune hooked up in the same rare context.

Tony Sauro

After all these years, Ron Hacker and good fortune hooked up in the same rare context.

He brings the results to Stockton tonight. With a local note.

"It was a really special performance," said the Oakland-based bluesman. "It was one of those nights you get lucky, end up playing really well and get it recorded. I like it better than any CD I've ever done."

That would be "Ron Hacker Live in San Francisco," a 10-track recording captured on Nov. 30, 2011, at San Francisco's Biscuits & Blues club.

"It's been a long time, too," he said of his 10th album in a 35-year career. "We did a did straight set. One take. No over-dubbing. It's pretty cool, too. It's so new, I just started sending out copies (Monday)."

He's a club maven, playing weekly at the Saloon in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.

Co-produced by Hacker and Jonny Thomas, a San Francisco Art Institute student, parts of the Biscuits & Blues video might be used in a documentary film about Hacker's life and career. It's "still in the working state" as part of Thomas' senior thesis.

Hacker covered that - bluntly and colorfully - in "White Trash Bluesman," his 2007 memoir. He's working on a second book about the art of playing the blues.

"We're doing a lot of interviews," said Hacker, who played a role in "Just Like Heaven," a 2005 Reese Witherspoon movie. "I was curious about why a kid (Thomas, 26) would wanna do this amount of work. Really. But I was talking to a teacher friend who said, 'The boy just decided to do you.' I'm really flattered.

"I'm 67 and this kid in his late 20s feels I'm one of the last white guys who played with the old black blues guys. There aren't many of us left."

Hacker's tried unsuccessfully to find other acting jobs: "No, I wish I could. Like, I looked real mean in the (audition) picture I sent in. It was for a Pepsi extreme-fighting commercial. I was supposed to be part of the audience, but I didn't look mean enough."

Thomas' documentary is a "little uncomfortable, though," Hacker said. "He knows all these things I'd just as soon she doesn't know."

Hacker's 22-year-old daughter Rachell - named for James "Yank" Rachell, Hacker's musical mentor - and Thomas are a couple. She's a student at Berkeley City College.

Hacker, an Indianapolis, Ind., native and U.S. Army veteran who just returned from another trip to Europe, should feel comfortable tonight.

Stockton bass player Artis "AJ" Joyce will join drummer Ronnie Smith, who plays on the new album, in providing Hacker's rhythmic support.

"It's a really cool mixture," Hacker, 67, said of his interplay with Joyce, 55, an Edison High School graduate who's a former member of Hacker's band. "AJ plays really funky. Really, really good. I play really old-time music. We're both pretty active on stage. Ronnie has that hip-hop feel. It's just that mixture. ..."

Joyce also has provided rhythms for Sista Monica, a soul singer now based in Mountain House, and San Francisco's Leah Tysse. Stockton's Shad Harris once was Hacker's drummer.

Hacker made it through a bad-boy childhood - learning about the blues while in reform school as a 12-year-old. He'd stolen money from parking meters.

"I was really strung out on cigarettes at 11," he said. "I'd steal 'em from my aunts and my mother. When I was a little older, I'd steal diet pills."

Hacker remains in demand overseas. Germany, France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark are on his 2012 itinerary.

"They treat the blues as an art form," Hacker said of the Europeans. "They have a lot of respect over there. You don't have to be famous. They love the fact I've done it for my whole life, even if haven't made $1 million.

"They can feel it. It's so cool. That's why I love going to Europe. It's a cultural thing and more about how it relates to art. We're more money-centric over here, which I don't like."